Today's Dinosaur News

I'm also stranded by Hurricane Sandy, over in Cambridge, MA: home of Harvard, MIT, and the Car Talk guys. We've honestly been pretty lucky here, and I hope everyone else hit by the storm is staying safe.

My boyfriend and I were in Holyoke for my sister's wedding (which was beautiful, congrats Maureen and Zack!!) and decided to hang in Boston for a day before heading home for Halloween. Last night we found out we are stranded here until at least Wednesday night, so it looks like we'll be spending Halloween on a plane. Sad face.

But! Let me share some dinosaur news because that always cheers me up! First, on our way to the rehearsal dinner on Friday we spotted a turn-off for dinosaur tracks, so we trotted down the trail in our dress clothes and checked it out. The area is part of the Connecticut River Valley, which is known for its abundance of dinosaur tracks. (That's my hand in one of the medium-sized prints.) According to the interpretive signage at the site, Yale University professor John Ostram identified three species from the tracks in the early '70s: Eubrontes giganteus, Anchisauripus sillimani, and Grallator cuneatus.

There's also been a bunch of news from the recent annual meeting of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology. For instance we now have a good idea of how Tyrannosaurus Rex ate a Triceratops. (Hint: it tore the freaking head off!)

A team of scientists led by paleontologist Denver Fowler from the Museum of the Rockies examined 18 Triceratops fossil specimens, mostly skulls, from Montana's Hell Creek Formation. All of the fossil bones had evidence of Tyrannosaurus tooth marks.

...His team found extensive puncture and pull marks on the frills of many specimens. As this bony armor around the neck of the Triceratops would not have been a good source of meat, the markings suggest the Tyrannosaurus was gripping the frill in its mouth to rip off the Triceratops head to get at its nutrient-rich neck muscles, the researchers said.